


around the hearth

by goldbooksblack



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, My OCs, a retelling of sorts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 09:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14281764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldbooksblack/pseuds/goldbooksblack
Summary: Around the hearth, they tell a story.A young girl looks up at her mother with large doe eyes, the fire beside her reflected in her brown gaze. “The story, Mama? Please?”Mother shifts her weight just a bit. “Alright, then.” Planting a soft kiss to her forehead, she takes a breath. “Once upon a time, in a land called Prythian . . .”





	around the hearth

Around the hearth, they tell a story. 

A young girl looks up at her mother with large doe eyes, the fire beside her reflected in her brown gaze. “The story, Mama? Please?”

Her mother is a young thing, sweet-faced and exhausted. Hands worn from labor, wrinkles set deep into the soft skin of her face. But she smiles gently and brings her daughter into her arms. “Which story, darling?”

Her daughter snuggles into her chest, her breathing molding to her mother’s heartbeat. “My favorite.” 

Mother shifts her weight just a bit. “Alright, then.” Planting a soft kiss to her forehead, she takes a breath. “Once upon a time, in a land called Prythian . . .”

 

~*~

 

“We’ve found them.” 

Nesta Archeron looked up from the stack of papers on her desk at her brother-in-law. Rhysand stood leaning against the doorframe, hands in his pockets. Only his cutting violet gaze deterred from the casual appearance. 

There was only one thing he would go directly to her for. “You’re sure?” She hadn’t meant for it to come out breathy, tinged with excitement, the only sign of her sentiment.

But the apparent happiness made Rhysand shift from the doorframe and onto his soles. He was still unsettled by his sister, even after nearly three decades. “Yes.” 

Nesta leaned back in her chair, pondering. The oldest queen was long dead, succumbing to the fear of being hunted. As for the other queens . . . 

Three remained. 

Nesta saw their faces as if she was in the Mortal Lands once more, voice like daggers as she pleaded with them for their half of the Book. The middle-aged queen, cloaked in black. Frowning, face contorted in a false focus on thinking. Her other half, awash in pristine white. Smiling, sweet as a summer’s day and stinging as a wasp. And the last one, who had been nearly Feyre’s age; eyes like a snake’s, beady and cold. Of course, she had to be a sack of bones and skin by now, punishment from the Cauldron. 

The thought brought Nesta pure, unadulterated joy. 

She pushed herself to her feet. “When are you going?” Not ‘where are they?’ or ‘what do you plan to do?’

_ When are you going? _

“Tomorrow morning.”

“I’m coming.”

Rhysand merely nodded. There was no arguing to be done here. It was Nesta who had campaigned for the queens’ heads, pressing him about it since she had taken up the mantle of emissary. To exclude her would be at the least, disrespectful. At the most, it would make a dangerous enemy of his sister. 

Nesta Archeron was going to kill the queens, one way or another. 

 

~*~

 

“I don’t need you.”

The commander tucked a strand of brown hair behind his ear and tilted his head. “Sweetheart, who trained you?”

Nesta scowled at him over her shoulder, pushing down the fluttering in the pit of her stomach when she locked eyes with him. “I could have done it by myself.” The thin, layered armor slid over her torso, clicking loudly into place. 

Cassian snorted. “Your movements were atrocious when you first started.”

Oh, she didn’t need a reminder. When they hadn’t been arguing or storming off to go their separate ways, Cassian had knocked her flat on her ass. Multiple times. She had always batted his offered hand away, prowling to her feet and snarling, “Again.” 

She spun around, away from him, and made to move out of the armory. A hand closed around her wrist lightly. “Nesta. Wait.”

Nesta gave her wrist a violent shake before turning around. “What?” She snarled. 

The high lord’s commander was gazing down at her. He was easily a foot taller than her, if not more, and she had always disliked having to look up at him every time she wished to speak. His brown eyes fixated on her blue-gray ones. 

She knew what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth. 

“Don’t you . . . don’t you think we should talk about . . .”

“About what?” She interrupted. Heat rose in her chest, and she quickly tampered it. There was to be no outbursts today. Not if she wanted to complete her thirty-year quest for vengeance. 

“Us.” The word was one syllable, two letters, and a lifetime of pain. Unbidden, the memory came to her. A dark night after a trip to the mortal lands. Seeing the house that her family had lived in, the little shack where she had let her anger fester. The carvings that still adorned the doorway, remnants of a man who had died defending a price that she hadn’t even let herself think about. The memories had soaked itself into the home (if it could even be called that), an arrow to the heart every time she saw it. The war had ravaged the land around it. The village was all but gone. 

But the house stood. 

She had wanted to scream, cry, bang her fists against the door, set the whole building on fire. Let her anger burn and burn until the snow around her was vaporized and the frozen grass would suffer her wrath. She had wanted to march into the village square where the townspeople had ostracized her family and burn it all, all down. 

But she didn’t. 

Nesta hadn’t even felt herself fall until it was the snow soaking into her clothes, knee aching from pounding against the bedrock of ice underneath. And she wept. Tears slid down her skin, acid in their pain. Offering her the fire that she had sought, internalizing it instead. 

She didn’t know how long she had stayed there, frozen in the snow, fist curled so hard that the palm of her hand had begun to bleed from her nails.  _ I could die right here. No one would miss me. No one would mourn me.  _

“Nesta?” 

Her eyes snapped to Cassian’s once more, and she snapped at him, “Get to the point.” 

“Nesta . . . you know as well as I do that . . . that we . . . we have something.” The Illyrian warrior shifted his weight. “Please, Nesta. Just . . . talk to me. Don’t hide away. I . . .” 

The feeling of Cassian’s arms underneath hers, lifting her out of the snow, wrapping her against his chest. Wings beating all the way back to Velaris, her head hidden so neatly in his jacket that the residents of the City of Starlight didn’t even recognize her. Being set down on her bed, the crackle of a fire in front of her, the heat of her blanket. 

And a word. 

_ “Stay.” _

The rustle of her sheets as he slid in next to her, arms tentatively wrapped around her, wings spreading out to settle at her sides. When she had awoken, he was still there, and the sight of him . . . looking at her, with only concern in his eyes, concern that she did not deserve . . . 

Something inside her had broken. A string, held taut, cut in the middle and sagging where it had once been straight. She remembered the simple action of her fingers carding through his hair, seeing the instinct in his eyes to hold her closer, the feeling of clothes being scraped and then thrown on the floor, the feeling of skin on skin and lips on lips on neck on breast on stomach on thighs on  _ that spot.  _ She remembered it all. 

“That was nothing,” she told the warrior. Ice in her eyes. “Absolutely nothing. It was a mistake.”

He only offered her a soft smile. “Be safe out there, Nesta.” 

 

~*~

 

Surely they should have known that they could not escape. 

They had tried, oh, they had tried. But all of them had failed. 

And Nesta . . . 

Nesta had derived pure pleasure from slaughtering them. Every slash of her blade, every movement of her mind to cut her enemies down, was for her sisters. For Feyre, who had trusted and suffered. For Elain, who had loved, far away from the Fae, but not enough to save herself. Every drop of blood shed that day was a reminder of who she had lost and gained, of what she had done and what she would do. Past, present, and future collided in a maelstrom of  _ nesta nesta nesta nesta _ , indescribable by all who had witnessed it. 

 

~*~

 

“The end,” Mother says quietly. The fire had dimmed a little, the warmth in the tiny house fading. “Off to bed with you now.”

“Mama?”

“Yes, love?”

“Your Mama told you this story?”

“Yes.” She barely remembers her mother, the memories buried under years and years of heartache and hardship. But the story holds strong, told not only by her mother’s tongue but by dozens others. It is one of their people’s prized tales. One that she is ensuring the legacy of by telling it herself. “And her Mama, and her Mama’s Mama, and her Mama’s Mama’s Mama.” 

Her daughter giggles. “And her Mama’s Mama’s Mama’s Mama?” 

“Yes, love. Exactly so!” 

But what would her daughter say, if she knew the truth? If she went on and told the true ending, the true events of what had happened? 

If she admits to her daughter that the eldest Archeron’s revenge had come at a cost greater than she had ever anticipated. If she admits that the queens had been more powerful than any of them had thought. If she admits that not everyone survived unscathed. If she admits that Nesta Archeron had to hold the commander in her arms while he died, felled by one of the queens’ magic. If she admits that the eldest sister returned to Velaris a changed female, living out the rest of her days mourning the loss of a male she knew she loved—and had never told. 

But Prythian is no longer, she consoles herself. And with it, its history is only stories. 

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone wondering: 
> 
> No, I imagine that her mother wouldn't even talk about the anatomy involved with sex, so that section is kind of superfluous. 
> 
> Visit my Tumblr for more: [goldbooksblack](https://goldbooksblack.tumblr.com/)


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